The Famous and the Dead

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Hood tried to ignore the photographers by looking out at the handsome walnut woodwork and the black leather chairs of the committee room. He felt self-conscious about the diamonds in his tooth, and resolved not to smile, which would not be difficult. His navy winter-weight wool suit was the best he owned. Nine on one, he thought, a baseball team against a boxer. Who’s the underdog here? He turned and looked behind him to the spectators’ gallery, gradually filling. Tourists? The curious? Committee groupies? When he turned to face forward again, a photographer was kneeling on the floor right in front of him, with a long lens aimed up at his face and the motor drive already clattering away. Hood smiled without opening his mouth, thinking, This is the worst fucking day of my life and it hasn’t even started yet.

  A few minutes later Grossly tapped his gavel with an amplified thud and called the meeting to order. He introduced Father Peter Dobson from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, who asked the participants to close their eyes and bow their heads in a prayer for Representative Scott Freeman and his assistant, Bruce Harbison.

  Hood bowed his head and listened. Dobson had an intelligent and soothing voice that made it seem God would have a hard time denying his blessing upon the slain men. After the amen there was a long, heavy silence.

  Then Grossly cleared his throat but his voice cracked anyway: “Thank you, Reverend Dobson. Today continues our congressional investigation into the questionable and quite possibly negligent conduct of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives task force involved in Operation Blowdown . . .”

  Grossly’s introduction was long and thorough. He explained that the Department of Justice, within which ATF operated, was not a partner in this inquiry, but a focus of said inquiry. He accused ATF of “irresponsible actions.” He suggested that the “highest levels of the DOJ were trying cover up those actions by stonewalling this investigation.” Hood thought of Cepeda. He stared at the portraits behind the dais, wondering who the men were, remembering his first boyhood visit to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Grossly’s outrage began to build and his voice became louder and his face went from skeptical to doubtful to abashed, then back to skeptical as he introduced the ranking member of the OGR Committee.

  The ranking member, Representative Collins, gave a much briefer opening statement, then looked over his sheet of notes and down at Hood. “Our first witness today is Charles Hood. Mr. Hood is a deputy with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, currently attached to the ATF Operation Blowdown task force. This task force was established five years ago to prevent the illegal flow of guns from the United States to Mexico. Mr. Hood served our country as part of the U.S. Navy during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and he has been a Blowdown task force member for four years. Mr. Hood, thank you for being here today.”

  “You’re welcome, sir.”

  “Mr. Hood, in light of the recent tragic assassinations in San Diego, I’d like you to open this hearing with a history of the firearm that was allegedly used in those murders, the so-called Love Thirty-two, an illegal fully automatic machine pistol manufactured in California. I understand these guns have a rather shady history with ATF. Then I would like you to tell us about your meeting, just last week, with Lonnie Rovanna, the accused assassin of Scott Freeman and Bruce Harbison. You did meet with Mr. Rovanna last week, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s start with the gun. Tell us about the gun that Mr. Rovanna allegedly used. We’ve got pictures up on the screens so we can all see what you’re talking about. We’re going to dim the lights for just a few minutes. Please proceed, Mr. Hood.”

  Hood heard the ripple of curiosity rise from the gallery behind him and he turned again to see his jury. From the wall a large monitor blipped on, with the bright image of a Love 32 resting on a black background. The gun looked fifty times life-size, like some futuristic contraption designed to orbit in outer space. The stainless-steel finish of the weapon glowed softly, and the powerful monitor threw light into the dimmed room. Brushed by that light, positioned directly below the monitor in the last row of mostly empty seats, sat Mike Finnegan. His hair was black and his eyeglasses were thick and he wore a dark suit. He seemed to be staring directly at Hood. Hood stared back. His vision was twenty-ten, last time he’d been examined. It was Finnegan, without a doubt. Even in the dim light. No doubt at all.

  Hood turned to face his congressional watchdogs, hearing the cameras and looking into the video lights aimed into his face. He took a deep breath and looked back once again and Finnegan was gone. He faced forward, folded his hands on the table before him, leaned into the light and told his story.

  33

  One hour later it was over. Grossly thanked Hood and a marshal seated the next witness, Janet Bly. Hood stood and waited for her as she approached and he could see that she was stricken. The stress of ATF work had long ago hardened Bly’s pleasant features, but now her faced looked weathered and her eyes were flat with distant fury. She took his arm and guided him away from the microphones to a quieter place near the gallery. “Good job, Charlie. I hope I can keep my cool, too. I didn’t know you’d be here until Soriana told me. Did you know that no one else from Blowdown got subpoenas but us? I find that interesting.”

  “It’s divide and conquer.”

  “They can’t pit us against each other. It won’t work. This is an embarrassing spectacle.” Bly leaned in close: “Twelve years of this and I’m about that close to flipping them this badge.”

  “Don’t. The Love Thirty-twos didn’t walk. They ran. It wasn’t our fault.”

  “Then why do I feel like a sucker?”

  “Just tell the truth.”

  “But where’s our backup? Where’s Lansing? Where’s the director, for that matter? Where’s the rest of ATF when we need them?” She let her eyes roam Hood’s face, then looked past him toward the dais. She took his arm again. “I can’t help you with Rovanna, Charlie. I can’t speculate or make excuses. I don’t know why you saw him or what you were looking for. All I know is one thing: I trust you. I’ve got to go. Caution, friend—there’s some reporters lying in wait.”

  Hood stepped out of the committee room and looked past the reporters and around them and through the windows in search of Mike, holding up a hand and politely declining to answer more questions. They trailed after him anyway, shouting questions and shooting pictures and video as he worked his way to the underground that would take him to the Capitol Building. At his hotel across the street he collected his bags and the bellman told him all of the airports had just now been shut down for the storm. Fine, Hood thought—a stroke of luck? He took one of the last available rooms at a much higher rate and carried his overnight bag back to the elevator and into his new room. He changed into the casual clothes he’d flown out in and the chukka boots he’d sprayed liberally with waterproofing before leaving Buenavista. He bought an expensive overcoat and a heavy wool scarf in one of the hotel stores downstairs, then ventured outside into the storm.

  He hustled across Pennsylvania toward the Metro entrance, leaning into blowing snowflakes that made no sound. The sky and the ground were white, and the buildings had lost their color and looked like long-forgotten prisoners peeking out at the world. He made the Blue Line landing and climbed down the steps. The government had shut down and the cars were filled with workers heading home. Hood scanned the rows of faces, got off at Federal Triangle, and headed into the blasting wind toward the Capitol Building. He found his way back to the Rayburn House Office Building, trudged to committee room 2154, and looked in. A young man with a deep voice was talking about Mexican law enforcement being kept in the dark by American agencies. Hood looked around the committee room, noting the security cameras.

  Down in the basement, just past the empty fitness room, Hood located the U.S. Capitol Police substation and badged Officer Donna Ford at the front desk. Behind her, he could see the monitor room with the live feeds coming through and other officers watching the screens. He asked to see the first-ses
sion OGR hearing videos from that morning.

  “Was that your hearing?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Can I ask you why you want to see our video?”

  “I saw a man in the audience I want another look at. He’s a person of interest back in California.”

  She studied him with frank suspicion, then rose slowly from her chair and went into the surveillance room. A minute later she came to the doorway and nodded him in. Sergeant Mark Herron sat Hood at a console and pushed some buttons and a moment later Hood was watching Grossly tap his gavel and calling the meeting to order. Herron asked where he saw the subject and pushed more buttons. The POV did a 180-degree switch and Hood was now looking over the backs of the OGR Committee members, toward the rear of the auditorium.

  “He was right there, under the monitor,” said Hood. “I saw him a few minutes after the meeting was called to order. Less than a minute later he was gone.”

  Herron ran the video forward. Ranking member Collins gesticulated rapidly without sound and Hood watched himself sitting stone-faced, looking up at him. Collins was still at it when Hood saw Finnegan come into view. Hood pointed and Herron slowed the video. Mike took a seat beneath the monitor, crossed his legs matter-of-factly, and locked his fingers together and over one knee. He appeared to be looking at the back of Hood’s head. A moment later Hood watched himself turn and look at Mike. The stare-down was longer than he’d remembered. Finally he turned back to the committee. Mike rose and walked out of the camera’s view. Hood watched himself take a deep breath and turn again toward Mike, finding only the empty chair. Hood waited for Herron to burn some stills onto a disc, then pushed his way outside into the storm.

  He trudged along Constitution past the Senate Office Buildings, but the snow was heavy and soon his boots were wet and his feet were cold so he found a Metro Blue Line station that took him out to Largo Town Center and back toward downtown, where he switched to the Red Line to Bethesda and came back to try the Orange Line way out to East Falls Church. No Mike. Then Hood rode back again to the center of the nation’s capital. The Metro cars were mostly empty in this storm, but Hood continued to watch and look and use his wonderful twenty-ten vision but he saw no Mike. He wondered if Mike had gotten out before the airports closed. The cold advanced on his hopefulness. He was zipped fully into the overcoat but his feet were mostly numb and his body shivered intermittently. The cars were surprisingly cold. The Green Line sounded lucky so he rode it clear to Greenbelt, staring at the faces of the other riders, but there was no Mike here either and he knew Mike would not be here and the other passengers averted their eyes and he got off near his hotel—he thought—only to find the streets were white prairies and not a single building was familiar. He faced into the wind and followed his feet. His waterproofed boots were soon soaked.

  Sometime later he came upon a tavern where he ate ravenously and knocked back a couple of bourbons neat to warm the blood. The waiter said the storm was supposed to blow through within hours so air travel might resume sometime tomorrow. After dinner, Hood sat in front of the tavern’s fireplace with a woman and her dachshund, which was curled on her lap and wearing a sweater. She talked about her granddaughter, who was second-chair cello for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and pregnant. He watched the flames and they took him away, outside himself, where thoughts could gain no traction and where there was no Charlie Hood. Freedom from himself was pleasant. He saw rivers and Beth’s face.

  Later, when his phone vibrated, he had a heart-dropping premonition that his father had died, and he was correct. The stroke had been massive and his death nearly instant. His mother was strangely composed and she didn’t talk very long, having two more of her children to inform of this. She seemed fortified by purpose. Hood stayed by the fire long after the woman and the dog had gone. More bourbon. Midnight came and went. When he got back to his room and took off his boots, his feet were blue-white and as cold as a T-bone just out of the fridge. He pulled the armchair up near the heater and put on the dress socks he’d worn that morning. He thought of his father and remembered good things from his boyhood and let the tears come.

  34

  Bradley and Erin walked slowly across the gravel driveway on Hood’s property. Her legs and ankles were growing heavy from bearing the weight of the baby and Dr. David had advised very light daily exercise such as this. The afternoon was cool and bright. Bradley turned to see Reyes watching them from the courtyard, the top half of his face just visible above the low adobe wall.

  “He’s worse than a bad conscience,” said Bradley.

  “He’s a delight and I love him.”

  They came to the dirt road and started up the gradual rise. The slender stalks of the paloverde were green now and just starting to flower out. A tarantula hawk buzzed past them, flickering black and orange in the sun. They came to the crest and stood with the peaks of the Devil’s Claws high and jagged to the west.

  Bradley saw motion on the hills between them and the sharp mountains beyond. He saw two vehicles facing them on the hillcrest far away where no road or even trail was visible. They were parked a few yards apart, what looked like a white half-ton Chevy pickup truck and an older red Durango with its driver’s-side door open. Two very small men sat on the hood of the truck, side-by-side, legs crossed. It looked to Bradley as if they were both looking through binoculars at him. Standing between the vehicles was a giant wearing a black sweatshirt, hood up. Bradley recognized the dwarves from the Biltmore and assumed that the enormous man was the one who had delivered Mike the bottle of Scotch. What in hell, he thought. Why? Spying for Mike? If Erin is your enemy, she is my enemy and she must be approached as such. Or, horning in on Mike’s territory? Some of Mike’s envious coworkers have decided to try just that.

  “I’ve seen them before,” said Erin. “Once where they are now. And once way over the opposite direction. East.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “I just did. Who are they?”

  “I wish I had a rifle.”

  “God, Brad. They waved at me once. They don’t seem to mean harm.”

  Bradley pulled his service pistol from the holster snug in the small of his back. He aimed one-handed and held well above the giant’s head and squeezed off the round. A second passed, then a puff of dust rose from the slope behind the vehicles.

  “Brad!”

  The giant put his hands on his hips and it looked like the dwarves lowered their field glasses and spoke, then raised the glasses back again. Bradley thought he heard laughter reach him across the distance. He held a little lower and fired again. The bullet hit to the giant’s left and short. Bradley guessed thirty feet off the mark, adjusted his aim, and fired again. High and left, but closer.

  Erin turned away and started down the road toward the house, but Bradley shot again and again. The first shot landed left. But the next one hit home with the familiar whap of a bullet hitting something solid and Bradley saw the giant flinch and step backward. Bradley lowered the pistol and watched the huge man. He seemed to be looking down at his middle, then he lifted the sweatshirt. Hood saw a patch of red on the man’s belly. The giant let go of his shirt and looked at Bradley and spread his arms out in a gesture of, really? The laughter of the dwarves carried to Bradley on the cool, dry air and hearing it he felt a fear that was different from any he had known. It was cold and constricting and on the move. With it came a crushing remorse and the humiliating knowledge that he alone had brought these demons upon her, and upon himself.

  The giant walked to the Durango and climbed in and sat with his long legs dangling out. He knocked his shoes together to get the dust off them, and closed the door. The dwarves scrambled off the truck and got in. Bradley emptied his semiauto at them, six more rounds: One hit the Durango door with a metallic ring and two more threw up dust close to the pickup, but the others were off. The giant waved out the window at him as the vehicles headed over the rise and one of the drivers laid into his horn.

  He
caught up with Erin as she waddled slowly down the road. He took her arm gently but his voice was hard with anger. “Mike’s friends.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Thomas.”

  She stopped and pulled her arm from his hand. “For what?”

  “They’re just like Mike. They use good people to create chaos and to amuse themselves. When the good people are used up and ruined, they let them self-destruct. They like to start with children. Those things back there are either helping Mike or trying to take away his prize. Either way, they all want to befriend Thomas. They’re all evil, Erin. They claim to be devils. They don’t try to hide it. They want to make Thomas part of it. I made a deal with Mike. I took some stupid oath. It changed my fortune and something inside me. I’m utterly sorry and ashamed, Erin. It’s all my fault. I’ve never been this sorry for something I’ve done.”

  He looked into her eyes as they searched his face. He saw the doubt in them and the fear. As she studied him, the doubt shrank and the fear grew. “What can we do?”

  “Nothing right now. Don’t ever talk to them, or to people you don’t know. They won’t use force. It’s not their nature. They cajole. They persuade and deceive. They’re serpents in our garden. They won’t try to steal Thomas. They’ll try to become our friends and get to him through us. Like Mike did.”

  “Mike. Do you believe me now?”

  “I believe you now, Erin. You were right and I was wrong.”

  “Is there a place where they can’t ever find us?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. But I promise you I will find a way to make us all safe.”